“Of what?” Thessa’s fear grew deeper. Why did he not seem surprised at the prospect of an Ossan attack? What did he know that she did not?
Kastora ignored her question. “If it is an attack, it means things are worse than I suspected. Ossa will want our cindersand reserves, our research, even our siliceers. She warned me about this. I thought she was wrong. I thought we had more time. I…”
“Master!” Thessa snapped her fingers. It was the only way to get Kastora out of his own head sometimes. “What is running out? Who warned you about an Ossan attack? I can’t help if you don’t tell me anything.”
He finally seemed to focus on her. “Adriana Grappo warned me,” he said. “The woman who hired me to make the phoenix channel. She told me that Ossa’s lust for cindersand was going to push it toward war. All we can do is…” He turned his head sharply and glared down the hillside back toward the gate, where Thessa was surprised to see that a trio of soldiers had appeared, standing just outside in the torchlight. They all wore the uniforms of Grent royal infantry, and it seemed that Captain Jero was about to let them in. “Keep that gate barred!” Kastora bellowed.
Jero turned in surprise. “They say they’re from the capital with a message from the duke,” she called up the hill at them.
“And what do they say is going on there?” Kastora shouted back.
There was a brief discussion. “Just the festivities. Should I let them in?”
Kastora stared warily toward the gatehouse like a dog sizing up a stranger at the dinner table. Quietly, he said, “I want you to go to my office. Open both the safes. The key to the left one is hidden under the floorboard beneath the front left foot of my desk. The key to the second is in the first.”
Thessa’s breath caught in her throat. “What’s going on?”
“Keep that gate locked!” Kastora shouted to Jero. “No one in or out except for the messenger you send to Grent.” Aside to her, he continued without answering her question, “I want you to gather every paper in both safes. You take them to the furnace, and if I give the signal I want you to burn them.”
Thessa fought a wave of nausea. Those safes contained the cumulative research, discoveries, and technical drawings of the entire Grent Glassworks – even some of her own. Burning all that would be burning generations of silic advances. And, she realized, all the Grent state secrets pertaining to godglass. “Should I wake the apprentices?”
“Only after the notes have been burned. Those are more important than any of our lives.”
She gave him a nod, hoping she didn’t look too frightened, and began to jog toward his office. A gunshot suddenly rang out, and she whirled to look back down the hill just in time to see Captain Jero stumble back and fall. One of the “Grent” soldiers held a smoking pistol. “Tear down the gate! Company One-Forty-Two, grapple those walls!” The orders were barked in a soldier’s authoritative voice, with an Ossan accent.
Fear seized Thessa so powerfully that she almost tripped and fell in the dust. Only momentum kept her going.
“You two, stop!” the soldier’s voice shouted.
Thessa looked over her shoulder as she rounded the dormitory. Kastora was on her heels, waving her forward with one hand and pushing godglass through his ear piercings with the other. “Go, go!” he shouted.
“Get that gate down!” Thessa heard a voice call in Ossan. “Secure the siliceers!”
Thessa reached the office just a step ahead of Kastora. He tore through the door behind her, barely winded, and aided by his forgeglass threw aside his desk with the strength of three men. He snatched up a loose floorboard, then opened the left safe, then the right, and began piling stacks of papers into Thessa’s arms. When it became clear she could carry no more, he slapped her on the shoulder. “The furnace!”
Thessa sprinted back across the courtyard, tears streaming down her face. She burst into the workshop, barely avoiding a collision with Axio. “What’s going on?” the apprentice asked in a panic. “Did I hear pistol shots?”
Thessa ignored him until she could get the furnace door open, throwing her armload of notes straight into the glowing fire, her eyes drying instantly from the intense heat and stung by smoke.
“What…” Axio tried to ask again as she ran back past him.
She stopped only long enough to bark instructions. “Wake up the apprentices and then the stable boys. No, stable boys first. We need horses saddled. Foreign soldiers are trying to capture the glassworks. We have to get everyone out. Go!” She tried to inject Master Kastora’s sense of urgency and authority into her voice. It sounded frantic to her ears. “And make sure Palua gets out. She’s in my bed.”
She sprinted back to Kastora’s office and was surprised to find him standing outside, leaning on the long, engraved blowtube that he used when he worked on bigger projects. Smoke billowed from the open door and windows of his office. Thessa skidded to a halt. “You … you set the building on fire!” Fire was one of the great fears of a glassworks. A mismanaged furnace could destroy a workhouse. A deliberately set fire would put an end to the whole complex.
Kastora’s face was ashen, expression grim but determined. “This way is faster,” he said, “and more efficient. I’m not letting my work fall into Ossan hands.”
“I told Axio to wake the stable boys,” Thessa said, trying not to think of all that silic knowledge going up in a blaze. “They’ll saddle the horses.”
“Good, we should flee as quickly as possible.” Kastora jerked, as if pulling himself out of a reverie. “The prototype…” He paused. “No, it’s too heavy for you, and there’s no time.” He turned one way, then another, seemingly frozen with indecision.
Thessa grabbed him by the arm, pulling him along toward the stables. “We can make another one,” she told him. “Leave it to the fires.”
“Yes, of course. You’re right.”
Soon they were running side by side, around the mess hall, skirting the compound walls. They rounded the dormitory, and Thessa paused only long enough to stop at Ekhi’s mews. The pistol shots had set him off and he was screeching terribly as he banged around inside the cage. Thessa didn’t have time to think about her decision – she simply threw open the door to the mews, unable to stomach the idea of him being trapped in a raging fire. “Go on, Ekhi! Go!” He stared at her for half a moment, hopped to a closer perch, and then leapt over her head. With a beating of his wings, he was off into the night.
Thessa stared painfully after him until she felt Kastora’s tug on her arm. “He’ll be fine,” Kastora promised, and she allowed herself to be pulled after him. They hurried past the next dormitory and around the corner just as the rear gate of the compound suddenly burst open, a squad of soldiers wearing Grent uniforms pouring inside with bayonets fixed on their muskets. Thessa barely stopped herself from calling for help before realizing that these, too, might be impostors.
Master Kastora pulled her back around the corner, a scowl on his face. Back in the direction they’d come, Thessa could hear shouting and gunshots. The garrison, it seemed, had not been taken completely unawares.
“We’re fighting back!” she whispered to Kastora.
“Indeed.” Kastora seemed to make a decision and, from a satchel at his waist, produced a sheaf of vellum that he thrust into her hands. “We’re going to split up.”
“What?”
“It doubles our chances of getting away. Flee the compound. I’ll rally our garrison and try to save as many of them as I can.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” Thessa asked desperately.
“Take these schematics to Adriana Grappo at the Hyacinth Hotel in Ossa.”